Hey friends - hope all good :)
Last day of half-price digital today for Veryan’s beautiful album, CDs (with long-form edition (plus download), bespoke six panel digi-pack and separate fine art print) left too.
Huge thanks for all the support so far, considering Veryan was a new artist to many of you we’ve been overwhelmed by all the positivity - I think she’s amazing and so pleased to see you love what she does too :)
Now time for the second part of our Q&A, talking about Veryan’s studio practices and each track on the album .
Huge thanks again to her for the music and sharing all this, it’s been an honour to be a part of getting this album out in the world - there’s a lot more to come from her I’m sure, and I for one am very much looking forward to it.
Please can you give us an overview of your studio and favourite instruments?
My studio is a work-in-progress as it needs to be a versatile space. It needs better sound proofing, and the layout isn’t 100%, but it also houses a spin bike, art supplies, and various books - as well as all my gear! That aside, it’s a nice place to retreat and develop ideas and there’s a great view outside with the forest behind us.
In terms of equipment, I’ve collected a few things I tend to use for most releases – and others that make appearances once in a blue moon. My trusty microKORG and my beloved Fender Precision bass guitar are key bits of equipment. And there are other bits and bobs I’ve yet to use on releases – a kindly gifted set of electronic bagpipes(!), a couple of Korg Volcas (bass and drums), a few guitars, a finger piano, an Arturia Microbrute and a Roland drum machine. I’m sure they’ll all appear when the time and subject matter feels right to use them. I also use various plug-ins. Arturia do some great instruments which I used quite a bit for this album along with my Arturia Key Lab 25 midi keyboard. I also use a lot of the instruments within Ableton, but I try to use them in different and unexpected ways.
please can you give us a quick breakdown of how you made each track?
The first iteration of this album was completely beatless but, as time progressed, I started to play with this idea of the various shifting energies that operate within Tai Chi practice. That naturally led to developing beats and the use of sequencers to add a sense of movement. I wanted it to feel natural, organic and evolving, so I didn’t want the beats to feel too synchronised. I deliberately kept them soft and quite low key to support the track’s main melodies and ideas rather than dominate.
The opening track has this central theme using various bells and chimes working collectively. Then the beats come in which represents the slow rise in energy and the keys give it that sense of euphoria. I used a Prophet V5 on this one as well as harps and brass instruments which I distorted and added various effects to, such as spring reverbs and delays.
Track two is built around several plucking instruments. A Koto, which is in Ableton’s instruments, was one of them. It appears in a more obvious form later. I’m sure I used it three times in total, but in different ways. And I used various mallet sounds before sequencing and modulating them, adding delays using dotted eights and some sub-bass to give it warmth.
White Crane has obvious ping-pong delays on the beats as well as a tonne of spring reverb! And I chose to use a Mellotron plug-in on this one as the main keyboard sound. It has that slightly hollow, other-worldly quality to it which suited the track perfectly.
The next couple of tracks have horns, choral voices and strings all from a Prophet VS plug-in and from Arturia’s Augmented Strings. Most of the ethereal sounding pads are from Ableton’s built in instrument racks. There are some lovely sounds in Operator, for example.
Throughout the album, I either stretched out some of the drums, or speeded them up so they ran at a slightly different times to the bpm of the overall track, and I pitch shifted some of them, which made for more interesting textures. I also adjusted the start point of various samples to change their character and shortened the attack of a couple, moving the start points around so they didn’t sound too formulaic. And I messed with different velocities, again, so it didn’t sound too “perfect” and machine-made.
As the album progresses, the final three tracks reintroduce the same instruments using the Prophet plug-ins and the Mellotron. But I altered the sounds quite a lot, so it might not sound that obvious. Tai Chi is all about this idea of moving in circles, so I wanted to bring those sounds from the start of the album back in towards the end.
The most obvious track which embodies that is the final track. It’s effectively track one again – same instruments, motifs etc, but treated very differently. It has this motorik, repetitive quality to it with its chugging bass and drum pattern amongst the slightly swirling and loose sounding pads. And then those familiar bells at the start of the album come back in right at the end. So, you end up full circle.
Now some shout-out too :)
Big thanks to Glacis for this lovely post
And to Bepi Crspan for featuring tracks on his citr.ca show here and here
Support the writers and DJs friends :)
So thanks again and have a lovely weekend - we’re off to Brighton (UK) for a couple of days so any tips for things on let me know!
Much love
Alex
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